 | Songs in the Whirlwind |  |
10
TO A CHILD SLEEPING.
Slumber on, my child, and in your slumbers
Know no care in your pure, little world;
Seek not yet to speak in mournful numbers
Of some flame that round your life has curled.
Know no care in your pure, little world;
Seek not yet to speak in mournful numbers
Of some flame that round your life has curled.
Life! My child, you know not yet its sorrows!
Still to you 'tis as some fairy dream;
Slumber then, and dream of fair to-morrows,
How things are not real but only seem.
Still to you 'tis as some fairy dream;
Slumber then, and dream of fair to-morrows,
How things are not real but only seem.
Peacefully you lie, how the remembrance
Comes so clearly back as I now gaze
On the face that bears so sweet a semblance
To a love I've lost, of former days.
Comes so clearly back as I now gaze
On the face that bears so sweet a semblance
To a love I've lost, of former days.
Form, and face, and hair so sweetly curling,
Fair reminders of a joy now flown;
But your own sweet nature stills the whirling
Of my heart, I know you're still my own.
Fair reminders of a joy now flown;
But your own sweet nature stills the whirling
Of my heart, I know you're still my own.
Still as fresh, as pure as Summer morning,
Like the dawn before the shock of noon;
Heedless of the night that follows dawning,
Of the shadows that shall gather soon.
Like the dawn before the shock of noon;
Heedless of the night that follows dawning,
Of the shadows that shall gather soon.
Sleep, my child, I would not stir your dreaming
With my tears, my heart shall grieve alone;
Time enough when real takes place of seeming
For some word or deed to break your own.
With my tears, my heart shall grieve alone;
Time enough when real takes place of seeming
For some word or deed to break your own.
Sleep on in your innocence and beauty,
Mindless of the world and all its cares;
Of its griefs, its joys, its irksome duty,
You have God, His love, me and my prayers.
Mindless of the world and all its cares;
Of its griefs, its joys, its irksome duty,
You have God, His love, me and my prayers.
| Songs in the Whirlwind | |